To see an older woman with a clearly very sexy younger man is the most marvellous pop in the eye to Ronnie, Paul, Bryan et al. The fact that she is not just a mother, but the most famous mother in the world - she is the Madonna, after all - makes the whole thing even better.

First of all, some of us would take issue with the notion that Madonna's young children awareness of their newly-single mother's very public W-style shenanigans "make the whole thing even better," but that's not even the issue. Should Madonna be able to do whatever she wants? Sure. I get wanting to overturn double-standards, I do. And I have no particular love for grizzled rockers cavorting with nubile children, either. If other women find Madonna's rebound empowering, well then, good on them. But I really do think Madonna is not the example we should be trumpeting as a new exemplar of changing standards.

But, seriously, do we? Is anyone still looking to Madonna as an exemplar of anything other than preternatural professional invincibility and variability? After all, it's a truth universally acknowledged that Madonna, like the Bible, can be turned to any argument, so varied are her guises, so abrupt her U-turns. Be pleased that a culture can accept May-Decembers without comment, perhaps, but anything Madonna does gets transferred post-haste from the public domain into that large warehouse marked "Stunts and Phases, Madonna's." Madonna and child [Guardian]